Lab News

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People become more logical without feedback

Most theories of reasoning assume that human reasoning ability is stable over time, but few studies have investigated the matter. We analyzed a study in which 20 participants drew their own conclusions to the 64 sorts of syllogisms on two occasions separated by roughly a week.

In the latest CogSci proceedings, we report the nature of the changes in the participants’ conclusions including their spontaneous improvement in logical accuracy, and we show how a model-based computational cognitive theory, mReasoner, can explain the results.

About the lab

The Mental Models and Reasoning website reports studies of the strengths and failures of human reasoning. We focus on basic research and experimental data, as well as on developing computational models of higher-level cognitive processes.